"Rose Covered Glasses" is a serious essay, satire and photo-poetry commentary from a group of US Military Veterans in Minnesota.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

ONE OF OUR FAVORITES AND A HERO TO JOURNALISM, DAVID WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO USE THE WORD "QUAGMIRE" TO DESCRIBE THE VIETNAM WAR.

NOW COMES GEORGE C. WILSON ON IRAQ:

Forward Observer: Quagmire CostsBy George C. Wilson, CongressDaily

President Bush, with his little war in Iraq, has outspent President Lyndon Johnson with his big war in Vietnam during comparative five-year periods, according to the Pentagon's own recently released figures.

The Pentagon's chief bean counter, the comptroller, sets forth figures documenting this in his "National Defense Estimates for FY 2008." The impartial numbers show that Johnson spent $2.1 trillion in fiscal 2008 dollars on the American military from fiscal 1964 through fiscal 1968 when both the Vietnam and Cold wars were raging. He put more than 500,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam from an active duty force of 3.5 million men and women, many of them low-cost draftees.

Bush spent $2.5 trillion in the same fiscal 2008 dollars on military activities from fiscal 2003 through fiscal 2007, even though his expeditionary force in Iraq was only about one-fourth as big as Johnson's -- some 140,000 troopers -- and the Cold War was long gone.

Also, Bush was paying a much smaller active duty force, numbering about 1.4 million in fiscal 2007, during that five-year period.

The stories behind those figures, which the comptroller did not go into in his 217-page report, are that the price of paying, equipping and caring for soldiers has gone way up since the days of Johnson's draftee military; that neither Congress nor Bush has had the will to cancel super weapons, including several designed for a Cold War that no longer exists, and that American taxpayers who just sent in their income tax checks are paying more and getting less for their money because of the Pentagon's failure to hold down the costs of new weapons.

The comptroller shows on Table 6-11 (page 129) of his new report that in fiscal 1968, when the American military was much larger, the Pentagon spent $169.7 billion on its military personnel in fiscal 2008 dollars.

In fiscal 2005, when the military had been dramatically downsized but the pay of the all-volunteer force had been raised, spending on military personnel in the same dollars approached the Vietnam era total, coming in at $139 billion.

The cost of general purpose forces -- the troops and trucks and tanks that fight conventional wars on the ground like the ones in Vietnam and in Iraq, as distinguished from strategic warfare waged with ocean-spanning missiles -- has jumped from $188 billion in fiscal 1968 to $216 billion in fiscal 2007, again in comparative fiscal 2008 dollars.

As for the advanced weapons systems, the Air Force F-22 fighter was designed during the Cold War to fight Warsaw Pact forces over Europe, and the Pentagon's Selected Acquisition Report issued earlier this month shows that the Air Force will get fewer planes for more money.

The SAR reveals that the Bush Pentagon plans to buy 184 F-22s for $65.3 billion, or $355 million for just one, counting the money already spent on its research and development.

On Aug. 2, 2001, Air Force procurement executive Darleen Druyun assured a House Government Reform subcommittee that "the F-22 team remains absolutely dedicated to the objective to deliver 339 production aircraft to the warfighters at an affordable cost."

Druyun eventually went to work for Boeing Co. and was later convicted and went to prison for using her military position to negotiate the Air Force's tainted deal to lease 100 KC-767 aerial refueling tankers from Boeing.

The prices of other weapons in the Pentagon's latest SAR underscores the Government Accountability Office's lament last month that Pentagon procurement is out of control.

The SAR shows that taxpayers are expected to pay $300 billion for 2,458 Joint Strike Fighters, or $122 million each for a plane that the Pentagon originally advertised as bargain basement; $54.6 billion for 458 V-22 Ospreys, or $119 million each for this aerial taxi for the Marines that has crashed a lot and threatens to take the Corps to the poorhouse in a Cadillac; $35 billion for three Navy CVN 21 aircraft carriers at $11.7 billion a copy; and $93 billion for 30 Virginia class attack submarines despite the near demise of the once-threatening Russian undersea force, or $3.1 billion for one.

Said the GAO despairingly in its March 30 report on Pentagon procurement: "GAO's reviews of weapons over three decades have found consistent cost increases, schedule delays and performance shortfalls. The nation's growing long-range fiscal challenges may ultimately spur Congress to cut spending on new weapons and to redirect funding to other priorities. In response, DOD might be compelled to deliver new weapons and to redirect funding to other priorities."

Bush was first elected to the presidency on a platform of bringing business-like practices to Pentagon procurement, including skipping whole generations of weapons if that made sense rather than making incremental improvements on obsolete ones.

Such reforms, assuming he was serious about them, have been among the casualties of Bush's embrace of pre-emptive warfare, with Iraq bloody proof of how easy it is to launch a pre-emptive war and how hard it is to get out of one.

6 comments:

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my post and to comment on it.

I think some of the things you wrote about are scary, and I certainly hope you are wrong, but logic dictates that you may just be right. With your background, i think you are also well versed on the subject. Like you, i dont see any grand conspiracy theories about what has happened to the country, but i do see grand collusion between corporate America and the govt that was supposed to be on our side.

Any American with a basic knowledge of current events certainly knows that Dick Cheney's favoritism towards Halliburton crossed a line when he coupled it with this stupid rush to war against the Iraqis.

We are most assuredly living in a one party system when there are but a handful of politicians that will even dare speak about isolationism or defunding this war machine. They know what will happen if they do, career over. Thats why the rare guy like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul is so welcome. Of course, the reward for their being brave enough to speak out is to be called crazy and derided in the press, the same cowards that let us get mixed up in this godforsaken war.

In my experience on a dollar of direct labor that is paid to workers in the defense business most of the major defense companies add approximately 17 percent for fringe benefits and that's where the worker benefit stops. The company then adds between 100 and 175% overhead to the subtotal to cover the local business operation. To that ever growing subtotal an additional 10-15% is added for the corporate office G and A. To the final subtotal buildup between 10-25% profit is calulated to yield a final price to the government.

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About Me

2 Tours in US Army Vietnam.
Retired from 36 Years in the Defense Industrial Complex after working on 25 major weapons systems, many of which are in use today in the Middle East.
Volunteer MicroMentor. I specialize in Small, Veteran-owned, Minority-Owned and Woman-Owned Businesses beginning work for the Federal Government.
MicroMentor is a non-profit organization offering free assistance to small business in business planning, operations, marketing and other aspects of starting and successfully operating a small enterprise.
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The Colors of Hastings

EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE

My gratitude to the person or persons who sent to me a new Sony Cybershot DSC-H90 Camera.There was no return address or acknowledgment of the kindness, other than a one sentence, typewritten note that read:

"For all that you do for others"

I am very grateful and will put the marvelous precision instrument to good use - Ken